


home is the fear you’re made with

by metaandpotatoes



Series: The Germaphobe and the Asshole [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Atsumu is a ball of social anxiety, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Kiyoomi is surprisingly well adjusted, M/M, Mysophobia, Phobias, Social Anxiety, brief BokuAka reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22810756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaandpotatoes/pseuds/metaandpotatoes
Summary: Sakusa Kiyoomi considers his fear. And then, he considers another's.“The germ thing,” Atsumu says, looking as if he is intensely trying not to care. Eloquent as always. And unexpected, again. An inconvenient turn of events, if the habit persists. Adjustments will have to be made. Reaction times calibrated. Kiyoomi steps back again, what he hopes is an unnoticeable amount.“The germ thing,” Kiyoomi repeats. Atsumu—headstrong, think-never Atsumu—hesitates. Kiyoomi briefly entertains the thought that he is trapped in a lucid dream.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: The Germaphobe and the Asshole [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642912
Comments: 54
Kudos: 889





	home is the fear you’re made with

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perennials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/gifts), [astroeulogy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroeulogy/gifts).



> There can be a real meeting between two people at  
> the point where they always felt marooned.  
> Right at the edge.
> 
> —Sam Shepard, Two Prospectors

Consider the space Sakusa Kiyoomi has made in his life to accommodate fear. Kiyoomi has learned, for example, that the sounds are the worst part of away game bus rides, not the fact of the coughs and hacks and snores themselves. So he purchases noise canceling earphones—two pairs, in fact: One for the locker and one for home. Kiyoomi has learned, too, that the problem with crowds is not the people, but the thought of being unable to escape. So he finds a corner—preferably with a view of the door, a window, the world beyond—and waits. And Kiyoomi has learned that when he’s on the court, he sees, thinks, and feels nothing but the ball. The way it ricochets from his fist to the floor. He tells himself if he plays hard enough, that’s all the ball will ever hit. So he plays. And he wins. But not on his own.

(He still tries.)

This is how Kiyoomi manages. He makes his fear a home and works within the space he is given; he notes the corners in which anxiety can spread, the floorboards that could rot and give way to dread. He avoids the dangers he can and prepares himself against the rest. And because he is the only one here to rebuild the temple of himself each day, flaws and all, nothing changes.

▪️▪️▪️

Kiyoomi knows what’s coming after the game: The gravitational charm of one Hinata Shouyou will pull everyone to center court. Beer will be proposed and plans made to walk to the izakaya the team invariably floods after a match against old teammates. Bokuto suggests the pilgrimage this time, still beaming after scoring the game-winning point. Kiyoomi doesn’t hold that pride against him. There was, after all, someone to impress—Akaashi the editor, impeccably dressed (as always) and inevitably discriminating. Akaashi stands (as always) on the edge of the group, keeping a careful distance as he speaks with Atsumu. Kiyoomi appreciates the space Akaashi maintains for himself despite the beasts pressing in around him. He appreciates especially the way the man’s quiet seems to hold in Bokuto’s freight.

The usual scene unfolds. Shouyou insists he will not drink (he will). Bokuto cries for the old Nekoma group to be called. And Kiyoomi declines by walking back to the locker rooms, which will be quiet for just enough time to allow him to shower and change and leave unbothered. He will walk home in the winter crisp and run himself a bath and bask in the feeling of another game won, a day off stretched before him.

What Kiyoomi doesn’t expect to hear is Atsumu decline the invitation. Atsumu is loud and arrogant and rotten to the core, but Atsumu is also desperate to be indispensable, which means he is never unexpected. He sends the ball where Kiyoomi wants it, makes bad jokes when others would know to shut up, reaches out to slap Kiyoomi’s back every time he lands a spike, even now, one year after they started playing together. Kiyoomi has come to appreciate Atsumu’s predictability, if only because he knows to step out of arm’s reach after a particularly good play. If only, he tells himself, to know when something might go amiss during a game.

With the game behind him, Kiyoomi decides that Atsumu’s social life is none of his business, since it never has been before. He changes and showers, careful as always not to let his feet touch the floor, to tuck his elbows in away from the walls of the shower stall. For these reasons, he moves slowly and deliberately, always lagging well behind the others when he can’t manage to get a head start.

As soon as the others file in, Kiyoomi cuts the water and leaves, toweling himself dry before pulling on his briefs and stepping back into the locker room, where, instead of emptiness, Kiyoomi finds Atsumu sulking in his seat. 

“That last set was one of your best,” Kiyoomi tries, in hope of securing for himself much-desired solitude. If Atsumu has any kind of weakness, after all, it’s praise, and during all the years they’ve known each other, Kiyoomi has never been afraid to exploit this weakness for personal gain. But instead of inflating, Atsumu sulks more, his shoulders sagging under invisible weight. 

“That’s what 'Kaashi-san said,” Atsumu mutters. 

“You usually like it when he compliments you.”

“Well I didn’t tonight.”

If Atsumu wants to be stubborn, so be it. Kiyoomi changes into his track pants and sweatshirt, pulls on a scarf and coat. As he does, he hears Atsumu shuffle his feet, dig through a bag, mutter to himself about nothing.

When Atsumu finally shares the cause of his ire—“'Kaashi-san said, ‘D’you think maybe people like Bokuto-san more ‘cus his jokes don’t make ‘em feel stupid?’”—Kiyoomi can’t help but laugh, even though the sound must shoot an arrow straight through Atsumu’s tissue-paper pride. For all their differences, Bokuto and Akaashi share the same straightforward way, and it’s anathema to someone who molds himself to whatever the situation demands.

Atsumu, at least, has the wherewithal not to look wounded, though he still looks upset.

“The hell am I s’posed to do? Go round like that clown and tell everyone exactly what I’m thinkin’ and feelin’ like it’s the most genius thing in the world?”

In Atsumu’s question, Kiyoomi hears something frantic and familiar.

▪️▪️▪️

Perhaps that’s why Kiyoomi winds up watching Atsumu stare down the cooler of a convenience store, examining the contents as if looking for a hidden prize. Atsumu asks what kind of beer Kiyoomi likes, then guesses Asahi Super Dry before Kiyoomi can answer. Kiyoomi replies Sapporo, just to spite him.

Only when Atsumu loads his basket of beer and snacks and what looks to be a pack of sanitizing wipes onto the counter does Kiyoomi realize that his evening alone has been compromised. 

“If you wanted to drink, why didn’t you go with the others?” 

“How’m I s’posed to go out'n have fun with someone after they tell me somethin like that?”

“And yet you seem to plan on having fun with me.”

“Don’t be silly, Omi-kun. Yer about as fun as a field fulla weeds.”

And Kiyoomi can’t argue with that.

▪️▪️▪️

Upon entering Kiyoomi’s place, Atsumu shucks his shoes and puts on new socks and washes his hands and cracks open a beer and lounges on Kiyoomi’s couch (the material, of course, is antimicrobial) like he never plans to leave. At the very least, Kiyoomi appreciates the care Atsumu puts into meeting Kiyoomi’s demands for anyone entering his space. Even then, he takes care to close the bedroom door before sitting down on the opposite end of the couch. Atsumu slides him a beer and a wipe.

“Alcohol kills germs, y’know,” Atsumu quips.

Instead of dignifying this inaccuracy with a reply, Kiyoomi turns on the TV, already set to some sports channel or another. A documentary about the 1964 Tokyo Olympics is on, running archival footage of the women’s volleyball team. The voiceover explains that the 1964 Games were the sport’s debut. The Japanese women wowed the crowd with their rolling receives, then wowed the Japanese commentators with their steadfast insistence on wiping up the sweat they left in their wake. The footage cuts to the same move, again and again: Roll, receive, wipe, the women whipping out the towels tucked into their waistbands like cowboys in a Spaghetti Western. 

“Hey Omi-kun,” Atsumu says when the gameplay devolves into talking heads. “How’d ya get into volleyball?”

Kiyoomi mutes the TV and does the math in his head: He and Atsumu have known each other for ten years, at least. Have spent no less than two months together thanks to various camps and tournaments. Have yelled insults and jibes and jokes at each other across more courts than he could count. Have been trapped together on trains and busses and even planes, much to Kiyoomi’s horror. Atsumu knows to pull back at the last second when he goes in for a high five, to cough decidedly in the opposite direction, to wash his hands whenever Kiyoomi sees him enter a restaurant or toilet or any other personal space. But Atsumu does not, apparently, know why Kiyoomi plays volleyball. Kiyoomi considers.

“In baseball, everyone used the same bat and helmets, and they huddled too close in the dugout, and I never slid to base because I didn’t want to get dirty,” Kiyoomi replies. “Basketball was too chaotic. And I wasn’t good at soccer, so I never got to play. My dad played volleyball, so he taught me how. And I liked it.” Kiyoomi drinks. “Volleyball involves everyone staying in their place and touching the ball one at a time, never for more than a moment. It’s a sport about keeping the ball away as much as anything.”

This seems to satisfy Atsumu, because he does not speak for the rest of the show, just drinks his beer and eats his snack and hums when he agrees with a point or analysis or particularly smooth play. Kiyoomi, meanwhile, drinks and watches Atsumu from the corner of his eye. The slouch of his shoulders when he’s engrossed in a segment. The delicate flex of his fingers around the can. The way he stays folded neat, nothing like his usual sprawl, as if trying to take up as little space as possible.

When the program is over and the beer is gone, Atsumu cleans up without being asked and takes the bag with him. Kiyoomi does not say that this is ridiculous. He knows he does not need to. He stays silent as well when Atsumu wipes down the table, the couch, the handles he’s touched with a wipe, which he then pockets. Even then, when Atsumu lingers in the genkan despite the winter spilling in from outside, Kiyoomi takes a step back and braces himself for an attempt at a hug. Thankfully, Atsumu stays still, hands hidden, eyes thoughtfully trained on a point just over Kiyoomi’s shoulder. 

“Is there something else?”

“The germ thing,” Atsumu says, looking as if he is intensely trying not to care. Eloquent as always. And unexpected, again. An inconvenient turn of events, if the habit persists. Adjustments will have to be made. Reaction times calibrated. Kiyoomi steps back again, what he hopes is an unnoticeable amount.

“The germ thing,” Kiyoomi repeats. Atsumu—headstrong, think-never Atsumu—hesitates. Kiyoomi briefly entertains the thought that he is trapped in a lucid dream.

“I mean, ain’t it kinda...inconvenient?”

“I can play volleyball,” Kiyoomi replies. “I don’t need to take the train at rush hour. I can make my own meals. And these days, chain and convenience store food is made under strict standards. I have strategies for dealing with crowds. We’ve known each other for how long, and just now you’re curious about all these things?”

“I guess I mean...don’cha ever wanna...y’know.”

Kiyoomi does not say he does not know, because, frankly, Atsumu should know he does not know from the way he refuses to finish a sentence or look Kiyoomi in the eye, and really, Kiyoomi just wants Atsumu to vomit up his usual strain of stupid (wait, not vomit—no—Kiyoomi winces at the thought) so Kiyoomi can reasonably snap at him to leave, but Atsumu never does. He just heaves a sigh and leaves Kiyoomi standing in the winter blowing through his door, and Kiyoomi decides that if he catches a cold, he will never forgive Atsumu for his cowardice.

▪️▪️▪️

But Kiyoomi doesn’t catch a cold. Life goes on as usual. The team drills and plays and wins more than they lose, and Kiyoomi continues to wake up each day and carefully maintain the boundaries he builds between himself and the outside world. Sometimes he imagines his face mask a torii gate, the esophagus a path to the shrine of the lungs and stomach and heart that sustain him. 

When Kiyoomi was a child, he found himself caught between the mirror image of decrepitude and renewal. He sat on his father’s shoulders in the crowd that had gathered around the shrine at Ise, which was really two. Soon, one would be gone, leaving only the new. 

“This shrine is 2,000 years old,” his father told him. 

“Then why are they tearing it down?”

“Well, not that shrine. That one is 20 years old.” He pointed to the leftmost one, dark and heavy under a layer of moss. “And this one was just built.” He pointed to the right, so fresh that Kiyoomi could still smell sawdust on the air.

“But you just said the shrine 2,000 years old.”

“It’s like your body,” his father said. “Every two months, your skin is totally replaced. But it’s still you, isn’t it?” 

And Kiyoomi looked at the two shrines—the shrine—and saw himself.

▪️▪️▪️

Another game, another pilgrimage, another night on which Kiyoomi and Akaashi and Atsumu stand apart, watching the chaos of the lives to which they have found themselves inexplicably bound play out both with and apart from them. Tonight, though, Akaashi keeps a careful distance from Kiyoomi and Atsumu stands alone.

“Bokuto plays well whenever you’re around,” Kiyoomi says, just to see Akaashi squirm under the fact of his affection. But Akaashi doesn’t. Instead, he smiles—his own brand of beam. 

By the time he and Akaashi are done sharing updates—Kiyoomi’s wrists are fine despite an earlier fall, Akaashi’s work continues to be arduous—and commenting on the general boisterousness of their chosen social group, Kiyoomi is surprised to see that Atsumu is gone. He’s not in the locker room, when Kiyoomi enters, nor the shower. The mystery is explained when Kiyoomi walks out of the stadium to see Atsumu, unshowered and still in his uniform despite the cold, sitting on a bench near the player’s entrance.

“You’re avoiding Akaashi-san,” Kiyoomi says. He knows he’s right because Atsumu doesn’t reply.

“What took ya so long?” 

“Don’t you have other people to spend time with?”

“I’d Skype with Samu, but he’s on a date or somethin’,” Atsumu replies. “An makin’ friends in the city’s been hard.”

“It would be, for someone as garbage as you.”

“Why y’gotta be so mean?” 

Kiyoomi starts to walk, and Atsumu begins to follow, and Kiyoomi does not complain because, really, this is preferable to the izakaya, to the crowd, to the yelling and beer glass clinking and chopsticks crowding the shared dishes, and really, Kiyoomi doesn't mind the free beer. 

“What about you, Omi-kun? You’re always slinkin’ off alone. Don’cha got friends?”

“Of course,” Kiyoomi replies. “But being around you fools eight hours a day is tiresome at best.”

▪️▪️▪️

Kiyoomi makes Atsumu shower the moment they arrive in his apartment. He takes the bags of beer and convenience store food without touching Atsumu’s hand, lays out the contents on the counter. He turns on the TV to the news this time, cuts the volume low.

“The germ thing,” Atsumu says, much later. Kiyoomi jerks from almost slumber into city dark. The TV is no longer on.

“The germ thing,” Kiyoomi repeats again. “What about it?”

Atsumu’s silence communicates the expectation.

“My father’s a doctor.” This is the usual explanation. Most people read into it what they will: Oh, the poor thing. His father was a _doctor_. As if that means anything at all. No point in twisting himself open for anyone who is fine with such an explanation. Atsumu, he expects, is—

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve said.” 

Kiyoomi is surprised he remembers.

“When I was young,” Kiyoomi says. He waits for Atsumu’s attention to wander, for no reason other than Kiyoomi himself finds the topic dreadfully boring, but those sleepy eyes stay sharp on his.

“When I was young,” Kiyoomi says again, “five or six, about—I thought I could tear myself out of my skin. I picked and picked until I bled, and then I found a place to pick again. When they asked what was wrong, all I could think to say was: I want to be new.”

Atsumu remains still, not stone but soft and waiting at the end of the couch.

“My father told me about a patient once who did the same, but she ate the scabs—thought she could get by on that and nothing more.”

“Like the time Samu told me he wanted t’eat me.”

“Twins are known to do that in the womb.”

“Not funny. How’d he get you t’stop?”

“He told me why we have skin. He told me that woman got sick all the time because she had nothing to protect her from all the bacteria and microbes floating in the air. So I stopped.”  
  
“And here ya are, completely healthy.”

Kiyoomi looks across the blue-screen glow to see Atsumu’s head tipped back, eyes narrowed and searching the darkness above. His free hand is spilled across his thigh, simultaneously open and closed, the fingers curling up like a temple chrysanthemum. Atsumu is as far away from Kiyoomi as he can be in the small space, and yet, there is an intimacy. Kiyoomi wonders if Atsumu knows.

“And here I am.”

▪️▪️▪️

The habit emerges like any other: Without any decision or declaration or intention. Just inertia. Game, crowd, beer, disappear—the team into celebration, Kiyoomi and Atsumu into a silence broken by Atsumu’s curiosity, whether or not Akaashi is present, after a time. They never go to Atsumu’s place—too far, Atsumu says, and too dirty, though this might be modesty or self-deprecation or both. Kiyoomi appreciates the thought regardless, just as he begins to appreciate the casual conscientiousness with which Atsumu navigates the world around them.

Still, Kiyoomi notices the way Atsumu relaxes on the other end of the couch. The spread of his legs, the way his hand moves from thigh to cushion. He begins to inhabit the space of Kiyoomi’s fear—and really, Kiyoomi no longer even calls it that, just an intuition, a reality, a fact of living—less a guest and more of a fixture and brings with him not chaos or decay, but a kernel, a kernel that he drops one day and that Kiyoomi realizes he has been searching for, endlessly, and cannot find.

“I’ve just been thinkin’ about what it means to really be close to other people, is all,” Atsumu says one night. “I don’t really like all this bein’ alone.”

“So you’re homesick?”

Atsumu waves the comment off. “Nah, things weren’t much better back there.”

“You’re not alone right now,” Kiyoomi points out.

“I ain’t, but I am.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s like Samu an’ his rice balls. He talks like he could just eat ‘em up for days. Like, that’s just how much he loves ‘em. An’ he knows that he’d eat every last one on earth if he could, even if it’d break his heart t’not have any more.”

Kiyoomi pulls his legs onto the couch, wraps his arms around them. He peers across a distance at this person, stranded in himself.

“Your brother’s onigiri obsession is truly strange.”

Atsumu glares, and Kiyoomi laughs, and a foot moves blindingly fast into his space, stopping right before impact. Atsumu pauses, sheepish, and retreats, not tight into himself, but away, as if packing up the pieces he wants to bring out for play back into a bag filled with garbage. Kiyoomi wonders if this is what heartbreak is: The fleeting thought—if only he could want to be a different person.

“What I’m tryin’a say is there’s sum’thin I wanna say, but I dunno how.”

And all Kiyoomi can think to say is—

“What are you afraid of?”

▪️▪️▪️

(“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu says, over the course of days and weeks and syllables, dropped through Kiyoomi’s life like a breadcrumb trail. “Kiyoomi, I think I want t’eat you.”)

▪️▪️▪️

Consider the space Sakusa Kiyoomi has made in his life to accommodate fear, not as though for a guest or companion, but something as necessary and intangible as air. Consider the space he makes when, for a hand or mouth or being against his, he opens. After all, he may counter: Is there anyone among us who can build a life without destroying ourselves?

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/metaandpotatoes). Also, go watch [Run With the Wind](https://www.crunchyroll.com/run-with-the-wind), if you haven't already. (I scream about it a lot.)
> 
> As usual, I will copyedit this in three months. Concrit, thoughts, questions, typo notes appreciated.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [home is the fear you're made with [PODFIC}](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24430408) by [alstroemeria_thoughts (aurantiaca)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurantiaca/pseuds/alstroemeria_thoughts)




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